Syria’s new foreign minister will appear at the UN in his first US visit

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani raised his country’s new flag at U.N. headquarters in New York on Friday where he was set to attend a U.N. Security Council briefing, the first public appearance by a high-ranking Syrian government official in the United States since the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a lightning rebel offensive in December.

The three-starred flag that had previously been used by opposition groups has replaced the two-starred flag of the Assad era as the country’s official emblem.

The new authorities in Damascus have been courting Washington in hopes of receiving relief from harsh sanctions that were imposed by the U.S. and its allies in the wake of Assad’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011 that spiraled into a civil war.

A delegation of Syrian officials traveled to the United States this week to attend World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington and U.N. meetings in New York. It was unclear if Trump administration officials would meet with al-Shibani during the visit.

“We are open to the international community and look forward to being treated the same way,” al-Shibani said, as reported by state-run news agency SANA. “With the removal of the reason for the sanctions, they must be lifted.”

The Trump administration has yet to officially recognize the current Syrian government, led by Ahmad al-Sharaa, an Islamist former insurgent who led the offensive that toppled Assad. Washington has also so far left the Assad-era sanctions in place, although it has provided temporary relief to some restrictions. The militant group that al-Sharaa led, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, remains a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Two Republican members of the U.S. Congress, Reps. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Cory Mills of Florida, arrived in Damascus last week on an unofficial visit organized by a Syrian-American nonprofit group and met with al-Sharaa and other government officials.

Mills told The Associated Press before meeting with al-Sharaa that “ultimately, it’s going to be the president’s decision” to lift sanctions or not, although he said that “Congress can advise.”

Mills later told Bloomberg News that he had discussed the U.S. conditions for sanctions relief with al-Sharaa, including ensuring the destruction of chemical weapons left over from the Assad era, coordinating on counterterrorism, making a plan to deal with foreign militants who fought alongside the armed opposition to Assad, and providing assurances to Israel that Syria wouldn’t pose a threat.

He also said that al-Sharaa had said that Syria could normalize relations with Israel “under the right conditions,” without specifying what those conditions are.

Other Western countries have warmed up to the new Syrian authorities more quickly. The U.K. government on Thursday lifted sanctions against a dozen Syrian entities, including government departments and media outlets, and the European Union has begun to roll back its sanctions.